An Elderberry Fall

by Ruth P. Watson

  “Baby, I am so happy to get a few days rest,” he commented. As he held me and Robert close, I had to fight back the chill that was overtaking my body. Simon took Robert out of my arms and swung him up in the air. I removed the last piece of fish from the grease, and dropped a few hushpuppies in the oil.

  Simon took his duffle bag along with Robert in his arms and went into the bedroom. Robert gazed at Simon in total admiration; and from the smile on Simon’s face, he enjoyed it. I put two pieces of fish, apples and potatoes on a plate for Simon and made one for me. I poured us a glass of lemonade. We sat down for dinner only after Simon pulled me in close and kissed me deeply, pushing his tongue into my mouth, and my body quivered.

  Our kitchen table seats four. However, we never have had visitors, except on the one occasion when Momma took the train here for a visit. It is a cozy little space, just enough for a small family. When we are together at the table, it is a reminder of the times when I lived in Jefferson County and Papa was living. We ate together and Papa made us children feel like our day was special, even when it was spent working out in the sun all day. Now Simon always had a story to tell, and most times they made me laugh so hard I would cry.

  “Carrie, I’ll be home for exactly five days this time, so don’t try to fatten me up, and make me lose my job,” Simon said, right after finishing the last bit of lemonade in his glass. Robert was still slobbering food down his cheeks. Simon mashed his apples and potatoes with a fork and fed him.

  “I’m not fattening you up. I don’t want you too thin.”

  “Well, I’ve got to stay fit, so I can play ball. One day we are going to be in the big league, girl,” he said, smiling cunningly at me.

  I smiled. The big league sounded promising, and even rewarding, but my husband being away was not the kind of marriage I had prayed for. “Yeah, I know.”

  Robert was full and now his eyes were heavy as his little head rested on his daddy’s broad chest. I took him out of Simon’s arms, undressed him and laid him in his bed. His little body, totally limp, was fast asleep. Tonight he would be going to bed without a bath. The selfish me couldn’t wake him up, because I wanted all of Simon’s attention tonight. After watching Robert’s little chest heave up and down, I went back into the kitchen.

  “Simon, I wish you could stay longer. Robert is growing up so fast. Did you see his new tooth coming in?”

  I sat down in Simon’s lap. “Yes, I did. What I am doing, Carrie, is for our family. I want to be here for every change he experiences.”

  His eyes were like magnets, and as I stared into them, I could feel as if I was him, and shared his passion for baseball, and family. “I miss you, and I don’t know that many people.”

  “You know the Halls, and Nadine and Jessie, and Hester. The people around here are nice and they will look out for you. I don’t have to worry when I’m gone.”

  Everything he was saying was true, but it did nothing for my yearning inside for him to be home all the time. Having Simon around all the time was something I wanted more than anything. He was everything I could ever hope for in a man.

  He had stayed home for the first two months when I arrived in Richmond. He wouldn’t leave my side, especially after our first nights together. It took him weeks of assurance before I could be a real wife to him. He would hold me in his arms, and let me cry out all the bitterness I had held captive in my head. Things like the day Momma made me stay home while she went to work for Mrs. Ferguson, and Herman Camm penned me in my room and took full advantage of my body and my thoughts. Carrying Robert for all those months was the worst feeling I’d ever experienced, so making love to my husband was the last thing on my mind.

  We made it through it all one night when the weather was brisk, the moon was bright, and a late summer breeze was whirling against the window pane, yet it was hot inside. I had just put Robert in his crib, and he was sound asleep with his thumb in his mouth. So comfortable, he’d sleep the entire night. Simon started like he always did. He’d kiss me on the forehead, since I was so much shorter than him, and then kiss me all over my face. I could feel him. When my breathing became shallow, he took me by the hand and led me into the bedroom.

  My nerves were shaky; I had never been with a real man.

  “Carrie, I am not going to hurt you, and neither will anybody else. You are safe now.”

  “I know; I know,” I repeated, at a loss for words.

  We sat on the edge of our bed totally absorbed in ourselves, gazing at each other, our chests rising and falling in excitement. The tension had us both hypnotized in the moment. Our eyes were locked and didn’t blink.

  “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “You can,” he encouraged me.

  I put total trust in him. He began to undress me, and for the first time since being married, I didn’t think about Mr. Camm, and that awful night.

  “You all right?” he asked as he slipped my dress over my head.

  “I’m ready, Simon,” I whispered.

  He unhooked my brassiere, and it tumbled to the floor, and then Simon undressed himself in front of me. As I watched, I could barely contain myself, as the temperature rose all over my body. My chest heaved at the sight of him crawling naked up on me, our clothes blanketing the hardwood floor. I trembled, as his breath and tongue traveled the distance of my body, sending chills all over me. When I was ready, twitching and turning, he penetrated his boldness into my juices. We locked our bodies together as one, and for the first time ever, my breath was taken away. It was a beautiful thing.

  Chapter 3

  Nadine from across the street knocked on our door early Saturday morning, less than five minutes after the rooster cocked in the coop out back, and the screech and rumble of wheels from the street trolley interrupted my sleep. The dew was fresh on the ground. I could hear knuckles tapping tirelessly on the wooden door, first soft and then hard. I sucked my teeth and grabbed my housecoat, put it on, and went to the door. There Nadine stood at attention dressed up in a gray skirt and a white blouse, smiling, showing all of her teeth. Her face was draped in big, bouncy curls swinging down over one eye, her full lips gleaming from ruby-red lipstick.

  “Excuse me. I know it is early, but I am fresh out of hen eggs, and the corner store is not open yet.” She was finely dressed for someone who was about to prepare breakfast. It was like she was headed to church or something. I cracked open the door reluctantly, but she pushed one foot inside, and stood sideways in the door frame, shaking her leg nervously. The orange sun had been waiting to brighten ever since I had laid Robert back down after changing his diaper and giving him his bottle. It was early, too soon for visitors.

  “Come in,” I said, since she had already inserted her body halfway inside my home.

  Nadine boldly stepped inside my kitchen. With a curious eye, she panned the room, scanning her eyes from the ceiling to the floor as if she was looking for something. Nothing was new to her; she’d come over once before when Simon was home to deliver a piece of pound cake she’d made, that was so dry, the bird on the window ledge, tired his beak trying to break it. Momma said not to eat everybody’s cooking.

  “How many eggs do you need?” I asked her.

  Twirling impatient fingers through her thick curls, she asked, “Is Simon up yet? I saw him last night when he came home.” I suppressed my tongue and thoughts.

  “How many eggs do you need?” I asked again.

  “Is Simon here?”

  “He’s sleeping; how many eggs do you need?” I answered, and opened the icebox. Behind the half-filled jug of milk were the hen eggs I’d gathered the day before from the chicken coop out back. I pulled out four brown eggs. I put them in a brown paper sack and handed them to her. She didn’t seem anxious for the eggs, her eyeballs shifting from side to side.

  She paused and said, “I thought I’d say hello to Simon since I’m over here,” never answering my question.

  I put the bag in her hand, but she did not move. I could sense she
had something on her mind, but it was too early for me to open up a conversation. I yawned. It was still dusk.

  I sort of coaxed her with my hand to the door and said, “We are sleeping in today. I’ll tell Simon you said hello.”

  She gave me a disappointed grin and rolled her eyes. Then she walked out the door. Before she left, she turned toward me. “Thank you! Now don’t forget to tell ’em.”

  As soon as her back cleared the door, I slammed the door shut.

  The nerve of her, I thought…coming over here all dressed up, and nowhere to go, asking about my husband. It was barely 7 a.m. To have Simon on her heart this early in the morning caused me to be concerned. She seemed to handle herself like the women Momma warned me about not becoming. “The Floozies,” she’d called them. I never wanted to spend too much time around them anyway. When Ms. Pearl arrived in Jefferson, she had taught all the ladies a lesson. I watched as Nadine sashayed out of the yard, and crossed the street. When I was sure Nadine had made it to her front door, I had gone back to my bedroom, and was cuddled up close to my husband, who was sleeping so soundly, he wasn’t aware I’d been out of the bed or that Nadine had come by.

  When Simon finally rolled over in bed and yawned, I was already up, dressed in my blue, a-line dress, my hair curled under in a page boy bob style and staring blankly out of the bedroom window. I had sat in the huge window seal at dawn and watched the sunrise come over the hill and into the sky. It was panoramic. I could view Nadine’s house, the church steeple on the next street and see a glimpse of the steam rising from the factory that made cigarettes and cigars. Now, I knew where all the stacks of tobacco from our farm in Jefferson County ended up. Robert was also awake, staring at me with his clear wide eyes from the pallet I had made for him on the floor. I went into the kitchen, poured myself a hot cup of coffee, with a little cream and a cube of sugar, cooked Simon some strips of bacon and an egg. I felt a bit too mature, now that I had adopted the same routine my momma had followed every morning. I fixed him a plate and sat down. Then I remembered to raise the curtain and tie it back to invite the morning sunshine in to brighten the dullness of the alabaster kitchen walls, which were bare. Everything was neatly kept in drawers and I hadn’t come up with anything to decorate the kitchen except the dish towels, which I hand-embroidered our initials on. A skill I’d learned from Momma who embroidered Mrs. Ferguson’s napkins and tablecloths.

  Outside on the window ledge was a cardinal tweeting and I threw it a kiss, since folks back home said that throwing a kiss at a cardinal would bring good luck. Across the street Nadine and her two children sat on the front porch. Her husband was away on one of his long train trips. He was a porter on the North/South railways.

  Simon sat down at the table. “I slept better last night than I have in weeks.” I knew this was the truth because the colored baseball players slept anywhere they could. Many times Simon said he slept on the bare wooden floor, or even in the barn with the animals. Just the thought made me nervous.

  “You are home; that’s why,” I said, wiping the minor spill of coffee from the kitchen table.

  “Life on the road is hard, Carrie. Just last week I was sleeping on this family’s floor and the pallet they made for us was so thin, I felt I was sleeping on the ground. It was rough,” he said, touching my shoulders.

  “Mama says sleeping on the floor is good for you.”

  “Maybe, but nothing can take the place of sleeping in a warm bed with my beautiful wife.” A wide smile swept across my face, and for a moment, I felt like posing just for him.

  After blushing, I laid Robert down on the quilt on the floor. It was away from the stove, but right where I could see him as I finished breakfast and folded clothes.

  Simon started to eat, and noticed Nadine out of the window. “Why is she always sitting on the porch? There has got to be some cleaning, cooking or something to do inside,” he said, sipping on his coffee.

  “Maybe they are not getting done. Maybe she is too busy in other people’s business, and sitting on the porch is her way of being nosey,” I commented, still a little uptight about her visit early this morning.

  “Right…she is always staring at us and waving,” Simon said, shaking his head.

  “Only when you are home, Simon.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Nothing, but something is wrong with her.”

  “Her husband is gone a lot like I am. She is probably just lonely.”

  “Maybe so…”

  “Don’t say it like that,” he said. “I hate being away from you and Robert.”

  After breakfast, Simon went outside to gather the eggs from the hens. I watched through the kitchen window as Nadine sat on her front porch twirling her curls with her fingers, and ravenously staring at my husband. She yelled across the road in a long Southern drawl, “Hi, Mr. Simon.”

  Simon turned and peered at her from across the yard. He waved, but kept moving like she didn’t matter. I could see she wanted more, since she stood there grinning and then pacing back and forth on her porch like an anxious school girl. When Simon returned with the eggs, she yelled again, “Thank you for the eggs this mo’ning!”

  Simon answered, “Welcome,” and walked back into the house.

  “What eggs are Nadine talking about? She said we gave her eggs.”

  “She borrowed some early this morning while you were sleeping.”

  “Oh,” he said, and added, “I told you she wants to be your friend.”

  “All I have time for is Robert.”

  Simon was naïve when it came to certain things, or had I just grown up fast. I was nearly eighteen, but I felt much older. I assumed that was why Momma used to say “stay out of grown folks’ business. Be careful what you want for because growing up can be painful.” From the moment Mr. Camm showed up unannounced at our house, dressed like a city slicker, and told my momma he loved her, and then proved to everyone in the town that he was telling a lie, I learned a lot. And the day the no-good bastard intruded on me, I was forced to grow up. I’d been forced to put away my black doll baby and take care of one of my own. I had Robert now. I didn’t understand anything about being a mother. All I learned from playing with the doll was combing hair and pinning a diaper. I felt I had more inside of me than just changing diapers, and cooking food every day.

  “Nothing turns out the way you expect it to be,” Simon said. “It is not Robert’s fault; he is only a baby. I love him no matter how painfully he came into this world. He is still my boy,” he added, tapping his chest, “and I am going to make him a man.”

  For the most part, Simon was the wiser one, yet I was still baffled. He seemed to overlook things, like answering the letter his sister wrote him over a month ago. And when I mentioned to him how much I miss him, he always felt his desire to be a colored baseball player was so important. His point of view on what was occurring now is more optimistic than real to me. All of my decisions relate directly to what happened to me the last two years. I was young, and tough times were the things I wanted to forget, so I struggled with maturity. My task now was to figure out my future. Would I be a teacher, or settle for taking care of my baby and my man. To add to it all, I believed my life would also include Nadine for some reason. She seemed to have her eyes focused in the wrong direction, and that gave me an uneasy feeling.

  Simon was always different and the recollection of me sneaking behind my momma’s back to the school yard to see him still remained, in my memory, the best days of my life. He seemed better and more mature than any boy in Jefferson County. I’d watch Simon when he visited with my brothers, sitting around the kitchen table playing games by candlelight and oil lanterns and secretly wished he could be my boyfriend. And that day when he told me he wanted the same, I felt I was the happiest girl in Jefferson County. Now he was my husband, my knight in shining armor, the one who rescued me from Jefferson County. Now, he was just like the character in the book our teacher Mrs. Miller made us read.

  My thou
ghts had taken me back to a place where I believed only the sun could shine, and a smile had draped my face. It wasn’t until Simon asked me, “Are you lonely, Carrie?” that I was snapped back into the present.

  “I miss you all the time, especially when you are gone for weeks at a time, so when you are away, I am lonely,” I answered, remembering the nights when we first moved to Richmond, and the sounds of the city made me nervous. The cries of the night, the sizzling of steam coming from the street trolleys had replaced the chirping sounds of crickets, and the street light lanterns had brightened the blackness of the night. The empty space on his side of the bed was cold. I was scared. I wanted him near me, snuggled up close to my breasts. I loved the security of having him in the same room.

  He smiled. “Nadine’s husband is gone too; she would be good company. Maybe she could keep you occupied until I can get back home.”

  “Nadine’s got two children to take care of, and I’ve got little Robert.”

  “You need somebody to talk to when I’m away from home.”

  “I’m doing fine by myself.” I didn’t need Nadine any more than he did. She was just the lady across the street.

  “I hate leaving too, but baseball is my life. I can’t wait to play beside Pete Hill or one of them cats. They are some bad colored boys, Carrie. They are three times better than some of them white boys.” Simon’s almond-shaped eyes lit up when he talked about playing ball, and for a moment, I felt embarrassed because I wanted him home with me.

  “Simon, I don’t think Nadine and me are alike at all. She’s different . . .”

  “I just don’t want you to feel alone. You need somebody to talk to; that way you won’t be worrying about me.”

  “I like Mrs. Hall. She is so good to Robert, and she loves it when we sit on the porch with her.”

  “She’s old enough to be yo grandma, and she is white.”